Myanmar emerging as hotbed of cyber slavery: CBI chargesheet on 'digital arrest' scams

New Delhi: The CBI has filed a chargesheet against 13 individuals for allegedly running "digital arrest" cyber fraud scams, controlled by masterminds located in Southeast Asian countries, officials said on Thursday. The agency also ran a parallel investigation into cyber-slavery and the organised digital exploitation networks in Southeast Asia, with slave compounds in Myanmar and neighbouring areas, that are emerging as incubators for the execution of such frauds. In the chargesheet filed in a special court here, the CBI said its technical analysis of 15,000 IP addresses associated with the scam network showed "extensive cross-border connections" with several key bank accounts, used for collecting and routing victims' funds, "being controlled from abroad".

From the vast technical dataset, India-based IP addresses were isolated, enabling targeted searches and identification of domestic operatives, officials said. The agency pinpointed these accounts being controlled by "masterminds based in Cambodia, Hong Kong and China". A CBI spokesperson said, "Importantly, multiple streams of evidence now indicate that slave compounds operating in Myanmar and neighbouring areas have emerged as major hubs for the execution of digital arrest frauds, where trafficked Indian nationals are coerced to run call-centre style cybercrime operations. "These findings align with intelligence gathered during parallel CBI investigations into cyber-slavery and organised digital exploitation networks in Southeast Asia." Using advanced technology, the central probe agency sieved through 15,000 IP addresses, isolating India-based IP addresses and launched targeted searches and identification of domestic operatives that resulted in the arrest of three crucial suspects in October this year. According to the spokesperson, the agency dug further to unravel the financial trail, call-flow patterns, VoIP routing, remote-access tool misuse and the broader technology infrastructure supporting "digital arrest" scams to nail the role of 13 accused, culminating in the chargesheet against them under the provisions of the IPC and the IT Act. "The case was registered suo motu by the CBI to comprehensively investigate 10 significant incidents of digital arrest scams reported across the country, amid a steep rise in such offences," the spokesperson said. The further probe against conspirators, additional conspirators, facilitators, money-mule handlers, and the overseas infrastructure enabling these transnational cyber fraud operations is going on, the spokesperson added.